GP leaders will debate and vote on seven-day GP appointments at the annual LMC Conference today.

The two-day conference will also see LMC representatives vote on whether to charge overseas visitors as private patients for use of NHS general practice - with any fees to be retained by the practice in full.

Suffolk LMCs will propose that the conference 'insists that the seven-day mantra be abandoned and any additional resource available should be used to enhance the weekend emergency cover services'.

The motion on charging overseas patients was put forward by East Sussex LMC, who argue that overseas patients should pay private fees to GPs, which should be retained by general practice.

This comes after today’s Queen's Speech said that migrants would be charged for NHS services that they are not entitled to, and the Department of Health has already launched a consultation on charging foreign visitors for some GP services, such as blood and lung-function tests, but keeping consultations free.

Other issues up for debate include whether the national self-certification standard should be extended from seven to 14 days.

The conference will also debate locums, with the GPC sessional subcommittee proposing a motion against any capping of locum rates and Derbyshire LMC proposing the opposite motion, requesting ’our profession to come together to agree a fair and reasonable cap on GP locum fees’, which will not be debated if the sessional subcommittee motion passes.

Several LMCs have submitted motions calling for the GPC to collect undated resignations from GPs following on from the motion at the Special LMCs Conference earlier this year, but a change in format means there is no guarantee they will be discussed.

The GP trainees subcommittee has also called for a review on the future of the independent contract status. The motion asks for a survey of trainee and young GPs’ career intentions and proposals on how the independent contractor model can be preserved while offering new GPs the protected training time, and employment rights that hospital doctors enjoy, and exploring salaried systems.

Other motions, all of which are not guaranteed to be debated, include calls for:

Readers' comments (6)

Anonymous
| GP Partner18 May 2016 6:31pm

2 days of blah blah with minimal impact, sounds about right.

Incidentally, I'd be very careful of calls to separate out those GPs who spent "significant" time on nights and to let them retire early. I'd probably qualify, and yet I think it smacks of ladder-pulling to me. As I'm 18 months off the exit, I already feel terrible that my generation are handing over a profession in an awful shape after 20 years of Cardie-itis, without coming over all "eeeee, it were tough in my day, you don't know you're born" like Monty Pythons Yorkshireman.

Payment per consultation, with a consultation fee of 10 pounds per 10min patient consult will make all the lazy UK GP go to work on every day of the year. GPs should be allowed to charge extra if they wish to and the extra - and only if patients think that a particular GP is worth paying for they will pay such GPs.

This will be the panacea for all problems relating to access and ensuring that no GPs would abuse the current system where some work less but get paid more even though they are clinically crap.

I have no idea why we cannot charge all registered patients for longer appointments if they and the GP so wish. This would solve many problems. Also we need to be able to dispense to all. These changes would cost the government very little compared to other schemes to "save GP".